| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: question was straightened out for him: it became clear to him that
the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been
simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it
satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered
his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no
shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than
those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination
about these things but that they were accessible to any one who
should feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples
of the spirit - could make them blaze with candles and smoke with
incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. The cost, in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: Not you. You will make two hundred thousand francs again by some
stroke of business. With your capital and your brains you should
be able to accumulate as large a fortune as you could wish. ERGO,
in six months you will have made your own fortune, and our old
friend Vautrin's, and made an amiable woman very happy, to say
nothing of your people at home, who must blow on their fingers to
warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need not be
surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven
out of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after
just such a bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my
gentleman to----"
Father Goriot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: there ensued the softest chorus of lady-laughter, as if at some
hidden joke.
"Come in, Eudora dear," said Amelia Lancaster. "Yes, come in,
Eudora dear," said Anna Lancaster. "Yes, come in, Eudora dear,"
said Sophia Willing.
Sophia looked much older than her sisters, but with that
exception the resemblance between all three was startling. They
always dressed exactly alike, too, in silken fabric of bluish
lavender, like myrtle blossoms. Some of the poetical souls in the
village called the Lancaster sisters "The ladies in lavender."
There was an astonishing change in the treatment of the blue and
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